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“Matti,” Náli said, appealing to sentiment.
To no avail. Mattias closed the distance between them in three long strides, so that he loomed over him, his glare stunning in its intensity. When he spoke, he bit off each word, succinct and sharp-edged. “You thought – you were sure – that you would drown?”
Náli sighed. There was no walking back on his word, now. Mattias would never believe he’d exaggerated, not when he was this angry. “Well, yes, I was – but! I never did, and that’s what counts.”
“You–” Mattias cut off whatever he was going to say with a click of teeth meeting. His nostrils flared, and a muscle in his jaw flexed, and he turned away, hands balled to fists at his sides as he marched back toward the hearth.
If pressed, Náli would have admitted that seeing that flare of aggression had been thrilling. Just once he wanted to push Mattias outside of his role as Guard. He’d thought he’d managed that, back at Aeres, when he’d earned a kiss and a pained admission dragged up from the depths of a soul long used to suppressing all its wants. But things had gone no further. He was still “my lord,” and Mattias had spent the past half-hour sitting across from him, hands empty, the height of propriety.
Bugger that.
Náli propped his hands on his hips; watched Mattias resume his seat, legs braced a belligerent width apart, gaze fixed on the fire. He felt his lips curl into a silent snarl. “Honestly, Mattias, what did you think it was like?”
A long beat passed, one which Náli filled with an impatient tapping of his slippered toe.
“Do you think it’s like a dip in the river in summer? Like daring each other to plunge through the fishing holes in winter and see who lasts the longest?”
A gaze darted over, briefly guilty, because he clearly hadn’t known that Náli knew of some of their rare, youthful hijinks, glimpsed from Náli’s window when he was supposed to be resting. Mattias had only done it once, in Náli’s whole acquaintance with him. Mother and a nurse had been tending to him – far less capable sickbed attendants than Mattias – and Mattias, finally driven from the room by Mother’s snappish insistence, had joined the other four Guards out on the grounds, at the edge of the river, no bigger than poppets from a distance. Náli had hitched a blanket around his shoulders – “Come back to bed this instant!” – and sat in the window ledge, aching with boyhood longing for fun, for adventure, as he watched his Guards strip naked and leap, shrieking like fools, into the frigid water.
Mattias had been the most beautiful, of course. Náli’s one glimpse of him without his usual tunic and armor, stolen and too far off.
An unhelpful reminiscence, at the moment.
“Did you think it was without risks?” he pressed.
“Of course not,” Mattias said, voice thick. “I knew–”
“That I go beyond the veil of the living, beneath that water? That I am no longer alive when I’m floating suspended in that horrid water? I’m dead, then. That’s the only explanation.”
“Náli.”
“How long am I under? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? An hour? No mortal can hold his breath that long.”
“Your magic–”
“Is a plague!” Náli hissed. “One that I might be able to get rid of if it turns out it isn’t mine in the first place! I’ve been trying to tell you that, and you won’t bloody listen. Do you think I enjoy this?”
Mattia’s eyes glittered. “I know you don’t.”
“When I’m down there, when I finally, finally manage to remember that I’m talking to a dead man, and that he’s sucking magic out of my throat to fuel – I don’t fucking know – undead birdsong or something! Then I open my eyes, and I’m still underwater, and I can’t tell which way to swim, and my arms are like lead, and yes, yes, I almost drown. Every time I go under, I die for a while, come back to life, and almost die again. It’s a miracle every time I ascend those steps.” He snorted. “Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe if I’d bother to stay dead for once–”
Mattias shot up with a roar. “Stop saying that!”
Náli was shocked to silence. Could only watch, agape, as Mattias physically wrestled with his anger; it looked painful.
Voice rough and unsteady, Mattias said, “Stop talking about being dead. Stop calling yourself a carcass. I don’t…I cannot…” He pinched the bridge of his nose and turned away, shoulders heaving with a deep breath that rattled on its way back out.
“You…” Too late, it struck Náli then: all that he’d said and how it had sounded to Mattias. “Oh,” he murmured.
“Oh, he says,” Mattias said, back still to him, spine rigid. “Oh.”
Careful, as he would approach an animal in the wild, Náli crept up to stand beside him, and saw the harsh lines of resignation stamped into his downturned face. “Matti.”
No response.
Náli wrapped one curled-tight fist in both of his hands. The skin was warm; Mattias had always been so very warm. More than anything, Náli wanted to feel that heat against him, all of it, without a single barrier between them. “Matti,” he said again. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Yes, you did.”
